There are precious few audio jobs in the game industry, because just one audio engineer can often serve multiple teams. In fact, it’s common to have a single audio engineer covering an entire game studio. Many studios don’t have any full-time audio staff at all, instead choosing to contract on a temporary basis as needed.

On a given day as an Audio Engineer, you’ll do things like:

Talk with the game team to determine what sorts of music or sound effects are needed

Search through commercial audio libraries to find sounds to use as source material

Record new sound effects in a studio or out in the real world (“in the field”)

Use specialized audio hardware and software to create sounds, or modify and tweak combinations of sounds to make new ones

Use custom software and editors to integrate your sounds into the game

Most of the audio jobs in the industry are contract positions. You can contract through a staffing agency, or as an employee of a contract audio firm. Most of the Audio Engineers that I’ve met are self-taught, although there are audio engineering schools that you can attend to get targeted training.

If you’d like to explore your options, enter your zip to get free info from top audio schools in your area.

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